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WH2020: The courts put of a halt on US Postal Service changes that could have impacted on the outcom

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited September 2020 in General
WH2020: The courts put of a halt on US Postal Service changes that could have impacted on the outcome – politicalbetting.com

This could have a big impact on WH2020. Federal judge issues temporary injunction against USPS operational changes amid concerns about mail slowdowns – The Washington Post https://t.co/t9Nl6sKLqZ

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    edited September 2020
    E pluribus unum, purely so the comments work properly.
  • FPT

    https://twitter.com/FT/status/1306692499327590402

    Leading scientists advising the UK government have proposed a two-week national lockdown in October to try to tackle the rising number of coronavirus cases.

    Experts on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-m) have suggested a national lockdown that could coincide with the October school half-term.

    The government is keen to avoid the reclosure of schools, having shut them during the national lockdown in March and only fully reopening them this autumn.

    That helps to explain why the government’s scientific advisers have looked at how a two-week national lockdown might coincide with the October half- term as part of efforts to bring Covid-19 under control.

    “As schools will be closed for one week at half-term, adding an extra week to that will have limited impact on education,” said one scientist who is a member of Sage, confirming the body had considered the case for a national lockdown in October.

    Another scientist who is a member of Spi-m said the body had also looked at a national lockdown that could take place next month.
  • Fraser Nelson: Anchorless Boris is allowing Britain to drift towards another lockdown: The Government lacks a strategy for dealing with the virus, and the blame game has already started

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/17/anchorless-boris-allowing-britain-drift-towards-another-lockdown/
  • On topic, Trump's an arse who will cheat, lie, and steal to win an election.
  • Anders Tegnell on Spectator TV.

    https://youtu.be/NynUwxOct_8
  • Lockdown, lockdown harder...a proper christmas film.
  • Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdpwn, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.
  • Lockdown, lockdown harder...a proper christmas film.
    Lockdown 2: Mass Unemployment
    Lockdown 3: Total Economic Collapse
    Lockdown 4: Trap and Eat your Neighbour's Cat to Survive
    Lockdown 5: Trap and Eat your Neighbour to Survive
    Lockdown 6: Beyond Thunderdome
    Which one do we find Boris wandering around Tower Hamlets with a racist message on a sandwich board?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    One thing Sweden has done is keep their rules relatively consistent. An England centred post follows

    The differing local lockdown rules, exception for grouse shooting, starting getting 1,000 people back to sporting events at the same time as reducing social numbers to six, probable reintroduction of under 12s into the six as a u-turn at some point. The palpable shock that kids pick up bugs when they head back to school and worried parents might want a test.

    It's all headless and directionless, and I say that as someone broadly in favour of restrictions...
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2020

    On topic, Trump's an arse who will cheat, lie, and steal to win an election.

    And Boris will make sure he is first on the phone to the White House if Trump is re elected, if Biden wins however Boris may find himself put on hold for sometime.

    Trump is a politician of Nixon like ruthlessness, whether what he is doing is illegal however is for the courts to decide
  • Quickly, let's shove all the Covid-riddled elderly into the care homes and stop treating cancer patients! Again!

    Remind me why we built the Nightingales again?

    Totally, irredeemably fucking useless.
    This virus response is going to end Johnson's premiership at this rate. I am beginning to doubt he will make it to Easter now.
  • Pulpstar said:

    One thing Sweden has done is keep their rules relatively consistent. An England centred post follows

    The differing local lockdown rules, exception for grouse shooting, starting getting 1,000 people back to sporting events at the same time as reducing social numbers to six, probable reintroduction of under 12s into the six as a u-turn at some point. The palpable shock that kids pick up bugs when they head back to school and worried parents might want a test.

    It's all headless and directionless, and I say that as someone broadly in favour of restrictions...

    The inconsistencies are just bonkers and definitely not following the science...indoor gym classes fine, outdoor ones with more than 6, computer says no.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited September 2020

    Quickly, let's shove all the Covid-riddled elderly into the care homes and stop treating cancer patients! Again!

    Remind me why we built the Nightingales again?

    Totally, irredeemably fucking useless.
    Given our record with Spain-linked infections of about two weeks until our major crisis last time, and the number of serious cases now in Spain compared to anywhere else in Europe, I personally think they should be stopping flights to and from Spain before making any of these other preparations for two weeks' time.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,741

    Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdown, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.

    The problem is you bump up against a populist Government trying be popular all the time.

    Boris wants to be an unremittingly cheerful, positive Prime Minister of whom people would say "it was wonderful to be alive when Boris Johnson ran Britain" - they may not think that now.

    As such, being relentlessly positive, promising a return to the good times, being the spokesman for the return to normality, "Mr Good News" is what he wants and does well (it's not frankly very difficult). He spent the early summer promising hope, a return to shops, a return to pubs, a return to restaurants, a return to the office, a return to schools, a return to normality, a return to the life we all had back in the good times when we gave him a 80-seat majority.

    Those days...

    The problem was too many people believed or wanted to believe the virus was gone and we could go back to the life we had without risk. We could restore the night time economy, we could have fun again, we could forget the virus and have back the life we once had.

    It wasn't so simple but Boris couldn't be honest - instead, he did what he always does and tells the audience in front of him exactly what he thinks they want to hear.
  • Pulpstar said:

    One thing Sweden has done is keep their rules relatively consistent. An England centred post follows

    The differing local lockdown rules, exception for grouse shooting, starting getting 1,000 people back to sporting events at the same time as reducing social numbers to six, probable reintroduction of under 12s into the six as a u-turn at some point. The palpable shock that kids pick up bugs when they head back to school and worried parents might want a test.

    It's all headless and directionless, and I say that as someone broadly in favour of restrictions...

    The inconsistencies are just bonkers and definitely not following the science...indoor gym classes fine, outdoor ones with more than 6, computer says no.
    Tegnell says Swedes are running a marathon. Wants rules that people can live with for a long time potentially.

    Struggling once again to see why MPs aren't demanding an urgent debate on the strategy of our response.
  • Quickly, let's shove all the Covid-riddled elderly into the care homes and stop treating cancer patients! Again!

    Remind me why we built the Nightingales again?

    Totally, irredeemably fucking useless.
    Considering that there are a large number of reports that hospitals are largely empty (plus the unused nightingales) - why are we emptying hospitals? Surely there is enough of the NHS sitting on its backside protecting itself to take up the slack.

    If the NHS does not step forward in a pandemic then what the hell is it for?
  • Everything Dido touches turns to shit
  • https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1306704259375861766

    In Italy they do it in under half an hour
  • stodge said:

    Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdown, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.

    The problem is you bump up against a populist Government trying be popular all the time.

    Boris wants to be an unremittingly cheerful, positive Prime Minister of whom people would say "it was wonderful to be alive when Boris Johnson ran Britain" - they may not think that now.

    As such, being relentlessly positive, promising a return to the good times, being the spokesman for the return to normality, "Mr Good News" is what he wants and does well (it's not frankly very difficult). He spent the early summer promising hope, a return to shops, a return to pubs, a return to restaurants, a return to the office, a return to schools, a return to normality, a return to the life we all had back in the good times when we gave him a 80-seat majority.

    Those days...

    The problem was too many people believed or wanted to believe the virus was gone and we could go back to the life we had without risk. We could restore the night time economy, we could have fun again, we could forget the virus and have back the life we once had.

    It wasn't so simple but Boris couldn't be honest - instead, he did what he always does and tells the audience in front of him exactly what he thinks they want to hear.
    As i have said loads of time, the go and have a foreign summer holiday message...madness.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    Quickly, let's shove all the Covid-riddled elderly into the care homes and stop treating cancer patients! Again!

    Remind me why we built the Nightingales again?

    Totally, irredeemably fucking useless.
    Given our record with Spain-linked infections of about two weeks until our major crisis last time, and the number of serious cases now in Spain compared to anywhere else in Europe, I personally think they should be stopping flights to and from Spain before any of those other preparations.
    The useless wankers should never have started up foreign holidays again in the first place.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    Promotion to Deputy Prime Minister seems more likely, the way this administration works. Or doesn't.
  • The speed these lockdowns are coming and clear national lockdown is on the cards, the data must be looking terrible.
  • This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected
  • stodge said:

    Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdown, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.

    The problem is you bump up against a populist Government trying be popular all the time.

    Boris wants to be an unremittingly cheerful, positive Prime Minister of whom people would say "it was wonderful to be alive when Boris Johnson ran Britain" - they may not think that now.

    As such, being relentlessly positive, promising a return to the good times, being the spokesman for the return to normality, "Mr Good News" is what he wants and does well (it's not frankly very difficult). He spent the early summer promising hope, a return to shops, a return to pubs, a return to restaurants, a return to the office, a return to schools, a return to normality, a return to the life we all had back in the good times when we gave him a 80-seat majority.

    Those days...

    The problem was too many people believed or wanted to believe the virus was gone and we could go back to the life we had without risk. We could restore the night time economy, we could have fun again, we could forget the virus and have back the life we once had.

    It wasn't so simple but Boris couldn't be honest - instead, he did what he always does and tells the audience in front of him exactly what he thinks they want to hear.
    He is by far the worst PM of my lifetime.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    The obsession of getting schools reopened fully is the undoing of all the administrations on this Isle.
  • This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    They wont be by next summer. They will be a mile behind Starmer.
  • The speed these lockdowns are coming and clear national lockdown is on the cards, the data must be looking terrible.

    Sounds like Leeds tomorrow.
  • Who are the 3%? Did they poll Cummings's relatives in Durham or something?
  • BluestBlueBluestBlue Posts: 4,556

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    And yet they are and they will be :wink:
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2020

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    On today's Redfield poll though the Tories have a 2% lead they would lose their majority and Starmer would have enough seats to form a government with the SNP, PC and the LDs, though it would be the weakest government we have had since WW2
  • I guess the panic buying of loo rolls will start in the next day or two then.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905


    Quickly, let's shove all the Covid-riddled elderly into the care homes and stop treating cancer patients! Again!

    Remind me why we built the Nightingales again?

    Totally, irredeemably fucking useless.
    This virus response is going to end Johnson's premiership at this rate. I am beginning to doubt he will make it to Easter now.
    I think we'll know by Christmas, or quite possibly sooner. The situation is recoverable if the local lockdowns manage to prevent things escalating completely out of control, and if one of the vaccine projects rides to the rescue in time to save families from having to leave Granny and Grandad to rot at home alone all over the festive season.

    If there's a second nationwide lockdown next month, as per the report that @TSE quoted, then there'll likely be a third one at Christmas and a fourth in February, along with massive attendant economic devastation (number three should be enough to kill off much of physical retail and most of the pubs and restaurants.) The country will then want rid of Johnson, and so will the Tory Party. The only question then is whether he uses the ill health excuse to go of his own accord, or has to be pushed.
  • HYUFD said:

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    On today's Redfield poll though the Tories have a 2% lead they would lose their majority and Starmer would have enough seats to form a government with the SNP, PC and the LDs, though it would be the weakest government we have had since WW2
    Maybe. But not the shittiest. Johnson's shambles will always hold that prize.
  • @rottenborough what's the bet? 10 points behind?

  • Quickly, let's shove all the Covid-riddled elderly into the care homes and stop treating cancer patients! Again!

    Remind me why we built the Nightingales again?

    Totally, irredeemably fucking useless.
    This virus response is going to end Johnson's premiership at this rate. I am beginning to doubt he will make it to Easter now.
    I think we'll know by Christmas, or quite possibly sooner. The situation is recoverable if the local lockdowns manage to prevent things escalating completely out of control, and if one of the vaccine projects rides to the rescue in time to save families from having to leave Granny and Grandad to rot at home alone all over the festive season.

    If there's a second nationwide lockdown next month, as per the report that @TSE quoted, then there'll likely be a third one at Christmas and a fourth in February, along with massive attendant economic devastation (number three should be enough to kill off much of physical retail and most of the pubs and restaurants.) The country will then want rid of Johnson, and so will the Tory Party. The only question then is whether he uses the ill health excuse to go of his own accord, or has to be pushed.
    Sounds about right.

    Although I expect there will be mass disobedience of the lockdown rules at xmas. People will not leave granny alone over the festive season and their neighbours on the phone to plod can go fuck themselves.

  • I guess the panic buying of loo rolls will start in the next day or two then.

    Bought mine two weeks ago; could see this latest shambles coming.

  • One thing that's puzzling about Trumpsky's attack on postal voting and the United States Postal Service is that it

    1) the first was NEVER likely to work (unless you could get lots of judges all drunk & keep them that way); and

    2) the folks most sensitive to Trumpsky screwing up USPS are
    a) seniors; and
    b) rural residents

    Which is why RNC and most sane (or less insane) GOPers are a best dubious.
  • FPT:

    moonshine said:

    Don’t worry gang, as I’ve said before the medical cavalry is just over the hill. Vaccine coming fast down the tracks. If it wasn’t then there would be no point in any of these measures, you’d just let it play out.

    The vaccine is a complete mirage. It matters not how desperately we crawl towards the damned thing, it's always shimmering on the horizon, always exactly the same distance away, always non-existent. The situation is hopeless.
    Remember when the androids were going to wake up on polling day and do what they'd always done before? Occasionally good things happen - if only by random chance!
    You'll forgive me if the notion of waiting for deliverance by miracle doesn't instill me with unconfined joy. There's no reason to suppose that this agony won't go on for years and years and years.
    Aren't we due to have the reports from Pfizer by the end of next month, and (around that time) Oxford too? That should give us a fairly reliable indication of whether there's any hope. I'm pessimistic about many other things in the world, but not the vaccines.
    I've no idea about Pfizer. We do, of course, know all about the latest setback to the Oxford project, where everything stopped because one person involved in the trial got sick. Now, I understand why they stopped, and the lengthy faff that must necessarily follow, but delays like this are why it typically takes about ten years to develop a new vaccine for anything, and why there is no particular reason to imagine that the process won't take that long in this instance. And there's no guarantee that any of these vaccines will ultimately do very much good at all.

    I know the researchers have never had so much incentive as they do now (if someone comes up with a silver bullet then they deserve to be handed the Nobel Prize for Medicine unopposed and hosed down with billions and billions of dollars just for extracting us from this endless shitty purgatory,) but the fact remains that no vaccine has ever been developed for any coronavirus, if my recollection is right. Will one magically appear in the timescale needed to prevent, at the very least, our reduction to a psychologically traumatized train wreck of a nation inhabited largely by penniless alcoholics? Colour me sceptical.
    I think you're being pessimistic here. The Oxford trial was stopped only for a week, and it's important to understand that this only means that they stopped dosing -- the already-dosed participants were still walking around, some of them (hopefully in the placebo group) catching COVID, and thus still building efficacy data.

    Pfizer and Moderna have apparently released their entire trial designs, including the normally-confidential conditions under which the data monitoring board will stop the trial. I don't have time to find and read them right now but going on secondary sources: interim readouts for Moderna will be at 53, 106, and 151 cases, and they do some simple stats to show how much efficacy would be needed at each point. They are expecting 53 cases in November. Pfizer seem very confident that their interim readout at 32 cases will be October, but they would need amazing efficacy to see enough power at that stage. Although Oxford's trial started earlier, they seem rather slower in dosing participants, and I don't think their interim readout stages are public.

    But it all points to November-ish, if at least one of these vaccines works. October if we get seriously lucky, December if somewhat unlucky. It has looked that way, to my back-of-envelope scribbles, since June. Of course licensing and roll-out will take time (and perhaps manufacture, depending on which vaccine it is and where we land in the queue) but I think we'll all feel a lot better knowing that one is coming.

    --AS
  • @rottenborough what's the bet? 10 points behind?

    I'm not putting money on this one at the moment - got too much tied up with the US election.

    Maybe revisit after November.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    I guess the panic buying of loo rolls will start in the next day or two then.

    Possibly. I restocked one of my Brexit boxes a few days back but I was going to leave bog roll and other essentials until later in the Autumn...

    Might move the bulk bog paper purchasing forward to tomorrow.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,741



    He is by far the worst PM of my lifetime.

    What he does understand is or are aspects of who we are and he plays to those characteristics really well. The desire to have fun, to be "free", that strain of positive individualism that values life and eschews negativity and "doom and gloom".

    My recollection of lockdown in East London was that it started to fall apart after two weeks - at Easter. The capriciously good weather was too much - people wanted to be out, to enjoy themselves, to be "free".

    There's a deep-rooted desire for the certainties of what we had and a reluctance to face the challenges of a different and uncertain future. People will always be conservative - to run back to what they knew and understood.
  • Isn't the Sun afraid the Teletubies might sue for defamation?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2020
    rcs1000 said:
    75% of non religious voters are already voting for Biden anyway according to that article but they are still less than the 94% of black Protestant voters who are backing him and the median American voter is still religious, so it is low reward and high risk
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,274

    Isn't the Sun afraid the Teletubies might sue for defamation?
    I doubt it - that's the Star front page.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,584

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    And yet they are and they will be :wink:
    Do you not see sustaining Johnson's government unless it gets its act together is sub optimal for the nation? The Conservative Party aren't a 'til I die football club, although one of the joys of being a fan of a football club is moaning about them when they are dire.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905

    HYUFD said:

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    On today's Redfield poll though the Tories have a 2% lead they would lose their majority and Starmer would have enough seats to form a government with the SNP, PC and the LDs, though it would be the weakest government we have had since WW2
    Maybe. But not the shittiest. Johnson's shambles will always hold that prize.
    Oh, I don't know about that. Keir Starmer might go mad and order the Royal Navy to level Bristol with a Trident missile strike?

    Nah, you're probably right. Pray God our continual record of replacing one useless Prime Minister with an even worse one finally ends after Johnson.
  • solarflaresolarflare Posts: 3,623
    A 2 week lockdown seems neither here nor there. How much time would it actually buy you? With the whole winter still in front of you?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    A political story has truly cut through when it makes the front of the Star.
    The paper for those who don't do politics.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,584

    A 2 week lockdown seems neither here nor there. How much time would it actually buy you? With the whole winter still in front of you?

    Two becomes four becomes eight, but it is less of a bitter pill to swallow than a straight-up eight week lockdown.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2020

    HYUFD said:

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    On today's Redfield poll though the Tories have a 2% lead they would lose their majority and Starmer would have enough seats to form a government with the SNP, PC and the LDs, though it would be the weakest government we have had since WW2
    Maybe. But not the shittiest. Johnson's shambles will always hold that prize.
    Oh, I don't know about that. Keir Starmer might go mad and order the Royal Navy to level Bristol with a Trident missile strike?

    Nah, you're probably right. Pray God our continual record of replacing one useless Prime Minister with an even worse one finally ends after Johnson.
    Unlikely, if Keir Starmer does become PM he will be the UK version of Francois Hollande in my view, an equally dull soft socialist who narrowly won because they were relatively inoffensive and voters were fed up of Boris as French voters were fed up of Sarkozy not out of much enthusiasm for him.

    Plus Thatcher and Cameron, arguably Blair were certainly better than the PMs they replaced
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,584

    Isn't the Sun afraid the Teletubies might sue for defamation?
    I doubt it - that's the Star front page.
    Same old s***e if you think about it.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    stodge said:

    Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdown, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.

    The problem is you bump up against a populist Government trying be popular all the time.

    Boris wants to be an unremittingly cheerful, positive Prime Minister of whom people would say "it was wonderful to be alive when Boris Johnson ran Britain" - they may not think that now.

    As such, being relentlessly positive, promising a return to the good times, being the spokesman for the return to normality, "Mr Good News" is what he wants and does well (it's not frankly very difficult). He spent the early summer promising hope, a return to shops, a return to pubs, a return to restaurants, a return to the office, a return to schools, a return to normality, a return to the life we all had back in the good times when we gave him a 80-seat majority.

    Those days...

    The problem was too many people believed or wanted to believe the virus was gone and we could go back to the life we had without risk. We could restore the night time economy, we could have fun again, we could forget the virus and have back the life we once had.

    It wasn't so simple but Boris couldn't be honest - instead, he did what he always does and tells the audience in front of him exactly what he thinks they want to hear.
    As i have said loads of time, the go and have a foreign summer holiday message...madness.
    Eat out to Help Out, wildly popular at the time and hailed as a roaring success, is proving less inspired in hindsight.
    Like picking up the ball on halfway slalomming past 4 and curling it into your own net.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    HYUFD said:

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    On today's Redfield poll though the Tories have a 2% lead they would lose their majority and Starmer would have enough seats to form a government with the SNP, PC and the LDs, though it would be the weakest government we have had since WW2
    Weakest on paper.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    Tonight it’s hard not to feel on the brink of calamity. Hopefully I am wrong.

    Will a second lockdown pull down the economic house of cards?

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770
    A new lockdown is politically impossible.

    The unwinding of restrictions, and in particular the failure to deal with Brits heading off holiday to CV19 hotpots followed almost immediately by school reopenings, pretty much guaranteed a new wave of cases.

    Track and trace, due to testing deficiencies, is now also essentially dead.

    So, we are going to almost certainly follow the Swedish example now.

    This will, I'm afraid, result in very little changing. I can make this forecast because I've just come from Arizona, where pretty much all restrictions were removed about three months ago. And they went from closed by statute to open to closed by behaviour. It's gone from a de jure to a de facto lockdown.

    People will still choose to avoid public transport. People will work from home. Shops will insist on mask wearing (because, it turns out more people shop with you if you insist on masks).

    It will be good for bars and restaurants. However, if people don't feel safe, they don't go out. Whether in Sweden or Arizona or Vegas (all of whom have removed most of their restrictions), restaurant dining numbers are still dramatically down year-over-year. Indeed, the OpenTable numbers show most US states doing far, far worse than Germany (numbers actually up year over year) or the UK (flat).

    So,
  • dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdown, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.

    The problem is you bump up against a populist Government trying be popular all the time.

    Boris wants to be an unremittingly cheerful, positive Prime Minister of whom people would say "it was wonderful to be alive when Boris Johnson ran Britain" - they may not think that now.

    As such, being relentlessly positive, promising a return to the good times, being the spokesman for the return to normality, "Mr Good News" is what he wants and does well (it's not frankly very difficult). He spent the early summer promising hope, a return to shops, a return to pubs, a return to restaurants, a return to the office, a return to schools, a return to normality, a return to the life we all had back in the good times when we gave him a 80-seat majority.

    Those days...

    The problem was too many people believed or wanted to believe the virus was gone and we could go back to the life we had without risk. We could restore the night time economy, we could have fun again, we could forget the virus and have back the life we once had.

    It wasn't so simple but Boris couldn't be honest - instead, he did what he always does and tells the audience in front of him exactly what he thinks they want to hear.
    As i have said loads of time, the go and have a foreign summer holiday message...madness.
    Eat out to Help Out, wildly popular at the time and hailed as a roaring success, is proving less inspired in hindsight.
    Like picking up the ball on halfway slalomming past 4 and curling it into your own net.
    I think having 100s of people rammed in pubs was worse.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2020
    Question Time back on BBC1 now
  • Jonathan said:

    Tonight it’s hard not to feel on the brink of calamity. Hopefully I am wrong.

    Will a second lockdown pull down the economic house of cards?

    Not just the UK

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/17/covid-in-europe-who-warns-of-alarming-spread-across-continent?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    On today's Redfield poll though the Tories have a 2% lead they would lose their majority and Starmer would have enough seats to form a government with the SNP, PC and the LDs, though it would be the weakest government we have had since WW2
    Maybe. But not the shittiest. Johnson's shambles will always hold that prize.
    Oh, I don't know about that. Keir Starmer might go mad and order the Royal Navy to level Bristol with a Trident missile strike?

    Nah, you're probably right. Pray God our continual record of replacing one useless Prime Minister with an even worse one finally ends after Johnson.
    Unlikely, if Keir Starmer does become PM he will be the UK version of Francois Hollande in my view, an equally dull soft socialist who won because they were relatively inoffensive and voters were fed up of Boris as French voters were fed up of Sarkozy not out of much enthusiasm for him.

    Plus Thatcher and Cameron, arguably Blair were certainly better than the PMs they replaced
    My remark about every Prime Minister being worse than the one before is a bit lazy, granted - it actually comes from something I half-remember a random voter saying on a news vox pop or one of these radio phone-in shows, which I've always found mildly amusing.

    Right now I'd settle for an even halfway competent social democrat (regardless of whether or not said person was dull as ditchwater) over a negligent, directionless nitwit every day of the week.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,911
    Jonathan said:

    Tonight it’s hard not to feel on the brink of calamity. Hopefully I am wrong.

    Will a second lockdown pull down the economic house of cards?

    The tradeoff now is what it always has been.

    Saving the lives of the old and the infirm, vs saving the economy.

    The government has chosen the former, at enormous cost, because the latter is too unpalatable to contemplate.

    The trouble is the young and the healthy have chosen to carry on with life. And short of welding them into their homes, a second lockdown is likely to be as effective as a Barnard Castle eye test.
  • HYUFD said:

    Question Time on BBC1 now

    I never watch it
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    rcs1000 said:

    A new lockdown is politically impossible.

    The unwinding of restrictions, and in particular the failure to deal with Brits heading off holiday to CV19 hotpots followed almost immediately by school reopenings, pretty much guaranteed a new wave of cases.

    Track and trace, due to testing deficiencies, is now also essentially dead.

    So, we are going to almost certainly follow the Swedish example now.

    This will, I'm afraid, result in very little changing. I can make this forecast because I've just come from Arizona, where pretty much all restrictions were removed about three months ago. And they went from closed by statute to open to closed by behaviour. It's gone from a de jure to a de facto lockdown.

    People will still choose to avoid public transport. People will work from home. Shops will insist on mask wearing (because, it turns out more people shop with you if you insist on masks).

    It will be good for bars and restaurants. However, if people don't feel safe, they don't go out. Whether in Sweden or Arizona or Vegas (all of whom have removed most of their restrictions), restaurant dining numbers are still dramatically down year-over-year. Indeed, the OpenTable numbers show most US states doing far, far worse than Germany (numbers actually up year over year) or the UK (flat).

    So,

    Isn’t that entirely contingent on deaths remaining low. If we - god forbid - get to a point where people are dying in hospital corridors, we will lock down.
  • solarflaresolarflare Posts: 3,623

    HYUFD said:

    Question Time on BBC1 now

    Oh fucking hell, haven't we all suffered enough already?
    24 hour rolling Question Time on all channels during lockdown. THEY WOULDN'T DARE, THE BASTARDS
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    On today's Redfield poll though the Tories have a 2% lead they would lose their majority and Starmer would have enough seats to form a government with the SNP, PC and the LDs, though it would be the weakest government we have had since WW2
    Maybe. But not the shittiest. Johnson's shambles will always hold that prize.
    Oh, I don't know about that. Keir Starmer might go mad and order the Royal Navy to level Bristol with a Trident missile strike?

    Nah, you're probably right. Pray God our continual record of replacing one useless Prime Minister with an even worse one finally ends after Johnson.
    Unlikely, if Keir Starmer does become PM he will be the UK version of Francois Hollande in my view, an equally dull soft socialist who won because they were relatively inoffensive and voters were fed up of Boris as French voters were fed up of Sarkozy not out of much enthusiasm for him.

    Plus Thatcher and Cameron, arguably Blair were certainly better than the PMs they replaced
    My remark about every Prime Minister being worse than the one before is a bit lazy, granted - it actually comes from something I half-remember a random voter saying on a news vox pop or one of these radio phone-in shows, which I've always found mildly amusing.

    Right now I'd settle for an even halfway competent social democrat (regardless of whether or not said person was dull as ditchwater) over a negligent, directionless nitwit every day of the week.
    As long as you can also settle for the higher taxes you will have to pay too
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Jonathan said:

    Tonight it’s hard not to feel on the brink of calamity. Hopefully I am wrong.

    Will a second lockdown pull down the economic house of cards?

    From the evidence of my eyes in downtown Newcastle on the eve of lockdown.
    Yes.
    Dead.
    At 8 pm.
    Worse at 9:30.
  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921
    dixiedean said:

    A political story has truly cut through when it makes the front of the Star.
    The paper for those who don't do politics.
    Weren't some on here suggesting that a relative non story about a SPAD on a bank holiday weekend was the defining political moment of the century?

    Instead, as I thought, we've dealt with it exactly the way we usually do. By making light of it.

  • dixiedean said:

    Jonathan said:

    Tonight it’s hard not to feel on the brink of calamity. Hopefully I am wrong.

    Will a second lockdown pull down the economic house of cards?

    From the evidence of my eyes in downtown Newcastle on the eve of lockdown.
    Yes.
    Dead.
    At 8 pm.
    Worse at 9:30.
    The other thing to take on board is the knock on effect across the UK as many will take there own lockdown measures, especially the vulnerable and elderly

    It will snowball
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,584
    Jonathan said:

    Tonight it’s hard not to feel on the brink of calamity. Hopefully I am wrong.

    Will a second lockdown pull down the economic house of cards?

    At least this time we have had the tip off before the hospitals fill up and the undertakers get busy. That said the vox pop interviewees in the North East on tonight's BBC news were more concerned about not accessing family and the pubs closing early than dying of Covid.

    The current crop of lockdowns is far more relaxed than the first proper lockdown. I think we are moving to a Swedish style herd immunity programme, which is what Cummings proposed in the first instance.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    kyf_100 said:

    Jonathan said:

    Tonight it’s hard not to feel on the brink of calamity. Hopefully I am wrong.

    Will a second lockdown pull down the economic house of cards?

    The tradeoff now is what it always has been.

    Saving the lives of the old and the infirm, vs saving the economy.

    The government has chosen the former, at enormous cost, because the latter is too unpalatable to contemplate.

    The trouble is the young and the healthy have chosen to carry on with life. And short of welding them into their homes, a second lockdown is likely to be as effective as a Barnard Castle eye test.
    Covid is not an old people issue. I’ve friends who got the bug. They are still alive, but still unwell 6 months on.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited September 2020

    HYUFD said:

    Question Time on BBC1 now

    I never watch it
    Interestingly some of the panellists are speaking remotely as well as all the questioners so if you are bored you can look at their living rooms
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdown, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.

    The problem is you bump up against a populist Government trying be popular all the time.

    Boris wants to be an unremittingly cheerful, positive Prime Minister of whom people would say "it was wonderful to be alive when Boris Johnson ran Britain" - they may not think that now.

    As such, being relentlessly positive, promising a return to the good times, being the spokesman for the return to normality, "Mr Good News" is what he wants and does well (it's not frankly very difficult). He spent the early summer promising hope, a return to shops, a return to pubs, a return to restaurants, a return to the office, a return to schools, a return to normality, a return to the life we all had back in the good times when we gave him a 80-seat majority.

    Those days...

    The problem was too many people believed or wanted to believe the virus was gone and we could go back to the life we had without risk. We could restore the night time economy, we could have fun again, we could forget the virus and have back the life we once had.

    It wasn't so simple but Boris couldn't be honest - instead, he did what he always does and tells the audience in front of him exactly what he thinks they want to hear.
    As i have said loads of time, the go and have a foreign summer holiday message...madness.
    Eat out to Help Out, wildly popular at the time and hailed as a roaring success, is proving less inspired in hindsight.
    Like picking up the ball on halfway slalomming past 4 and curling it into your own net.
    The principal loci of infection currently appear to be pubs and people making social visits to each others' homes. Some reports have suggested that grassroots sport also played a role in the North East situation. Insofar as I'm aware there's not been that much noise around restaurants.

    Like most of the few things the Government has managed to get right, or at least half-right, the work of Sunak. But he can't repeat his £300bn down the back of the sofa trick twice. If draconian lockdowns are attempted again it will finish the country off.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    edited September 2020

    Holidays to Thailand and Singapore are back on as countries are added to UK's 'green list

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8744515/Thailand-Singapore-safe-travel-list-Slovenia-Guadalupe-visitors-face-quarantine.html

    Just one detail:

    Entry to Singapore
    Short term visitors from anywhere in the world are not able to enter Singapore.

    https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/singapore/entry-requirements

    Entry and transit
    At present you are only permitted to enter Thailand if they meet one of the following criteria:

    If you are on a diplomatic or consular mission......


    https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/thailand/entry-requirements


    Other than that....Yay!

  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921
    dixiedean said:

    Jonathan said:

    Tonight it’s hard not to feel on the brink of calamity. Hopefully I am wrong.

    Will a second lockdown pull down the economic house of cards?

    From the evidence of my eyes in downtown Newcastle on the eve of lockdown.
    Yes.
    Dead.
    At 8 pm.
    Worse at 9:30.
    Conversely, down here in Dorset things are back to something akin to normal. And our numbers are low.

    What is happening up north to cause so much case growth? How about in London; hows it looking there?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdown, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.

    The problem is you bump up against a populist Government trying be popular all the time.

    Boris wants to be an unremittingly cheerful, positive Prime Minister of whom people would say "it was wonderful to be alive when Boris Johnson ran Britain" - they may not think that now.

    As such, being relentlessly positive, promising a return to the good times, being the spokesman for the return to normality, "Mr Good News" is what he wants and does well (it's not frankly very difficult). He spent the early summer promising hope, a return to shops, a return to pubs, a return to restaurants, a return to the office, a return to schools, a return to normality, a return to the life we all had back in the good times when we gave him a 80-seat majority.

    Those days...

    The problem was too many people believed or wanted to believe the virus was gone and we could go back to the life we had without risk. We could restore the night time economy, we could have fun again, we could forget the virus and have back the life we once had.

    It wasn't so simple but Boris couldn't be honest - instead, he did what he always does and tells the audience in front of him exactly what he thinks they want to hear.
    As i have said loads of time, the go and have a foreign summer holiday message...madness.
    Eat out to Help Out, wildly popular at the time and hailed as a roaring success, is proving less inspired in hindsight.
    Like picking up the ball on halfway slalomming past 4 and curling it into your own net.
    I think having 100s of people rammed in pubs was worse.
    100s were rammed into restaurants round here.
    Many pubs at least made an effort to distance.
    Some eateries made the opposite decision to pack them in.
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Question Time on BBC1 now

    I never watch it
    Interestingly some of the panellists are on Zoom as well as all the questioners so if you are bored you can look at their living rooms
    They would bore me to
  • Isn't the Sun afraid the Teletubies might sue for defamation?
    I doubt it - that's the Star front page.
    What REALLY worries me, is story about Russians claiming Venus.

    Has HM's Govt take steps to meet this new threat? OR are gonna rely on Trumpsky's Space Farce??
  • dixiedean said:

    Jonathan said:

    Tonight it’s hard not to feel on the brink of calamity. Hopefully I am wrong.

    Will a second lockdown pull down the economic house of cards?

    From the evidence of my eyes in downtown Newcastle on the eve of lockdown.
    Yes.
    Dead.
    At 8 pm.
    Worse at 9:30.
    If it was dead at 8pm, did the Zombie Apocalypse start at 9:30pm?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,584

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    On today's Redfield poll though the Tories have a 2% lead they would lose their majority and Starmer would have enough seats to form a government with the SNP, PC and the LDs, though it would be the weakest government we have had since WW2
    Maybe. But not the shittiest. Johnson's shambles will always hold that prize.
    Oh, I don't know about that. Keir Starmer might go mad and order the Royal Navy to level Bristol with a Trident missile strike?

    Nah, you're probably right. Pray God our continual record of replacing one useless Prime Minister with an even worse one finally ends after Johnson.
    Unlikely, if Keir Starmer does become PM he will be the UK version of Francois Hollande in my view, an equally dull soft socialist who won because they were relatively inoffensive and voters were fed up of Boris as French voters were fed up of Sarkozy not out of much enthusiasm for him.

    Plus Thatcher and Cameron, arguably Blair were certainly better than the PMs they replaced
    My remark about every Prime Minister being worse than the one before is a bit lazy, granted - it actually comes from something I half-remember a random voter saying on a news vox pop or one of these radio phone-in shows, which I've always found mildly amusing.

    Right now I'd settle for an even halfway competent social democrat (regardless of whether or not said person was dull as ditchwater) over a negligent, directionless nitwit every day of the week.
    No, no, it's OK Jeremy Corbyn lost to a well regarded former Mayor of London.
  • I guess the panic buying of loo rolls will start in the next day or two then.

    I bought some today. After they run out and since it is now Autumn, I shall use Dock Leaves :D
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,058

    Quickly, let's shove all the Covid-riddled elderly into the care homes and stop treating cancer patients! Again!

    Remind me why we built the Nightingales again?

    Totally, irredeemably fucking useless.
    Considering that there are a large number of reports that hospitals are largely empty (plus the unused nightingales) - why are we emptying hospitals? Surely there is enough of the NHS sitting on its backside protecting itself to take up the slack.

    If the NHS does not step forward in a pandemic then what the hell is it for?
    This week I was told to eliminate our waiting list backlog by January. Totally delusional from the DoH.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    At what point do the Tories ditch Chamberlain get Churchill and bring Attlee into a GONU.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,058
    dixiedean said:

    dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdown, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.

    The problem is you bump up against a populist Government trying be popular all the time.

    Boris wants to be an unremittingly cheerful, positive Prime Minister of whom people would say "it was wonderful to be alive when Boris Johnson ran Britain" - they may not think that now.

    As such, being relentlessly positive, promising a return to the good times, being the spokesman for the return to normality, "Mr Good News" is what he wants and does well (it's not frankly very difficult). He spent the early summer promising hope, a return to shops, a return to pubs, a return to restaurants, a return to the office, a return to schools, a return to normality, a return to the life we all had back in the good times when we gave him a 80-seat majority.

    Those days...

    The problem was too many people believed or wanted to believe the virus was gone and we could go back to the life we had without risk. We could restore the night time economy, we could have fun again, we could forget the virus and have back the life we once had.

    It wasn't so simple but Boris couldn't be honest - instead, he did what he always does and tells the audience in front of him exactly what he thinks they want to hear.
    As i have said loads of time, the go and have a foreign summer holiday message...madness.
    Eat out to Help Out, wildly popular at the time and hailed as a roaring success, is proving less inspired in hindsight.
    Like picking up the ball on halfway slalomming past 4 and curling it into your own net.
    I think having 100s of people rammed in pubs was worse.
    100s were rammed into restaurants round here.
    Many pubs at least made an effort to distance.
    Some eateries made the opposite decision to pack them in.
    Same here. It was crazy.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    This Government does not deserve to be ahead in the polls nor to be re-elected

    On today's Redfield poll though the Tories have a 2% lead they would lose their majority and Starmer would have enough seats to form a government with the SNP, PC and the LDs, though it would be the weakest government we have had since WW2
    Maybe. But not the shittiest. Johnson's shambles will always hold that prize.
    Oh, I don't know about that. Keir Starmer might go mad and order the Royal Navy to level Bristol with a Trident missile strike?

    Nah, you're probably right. Pray God our continual record of replacing one useless Prime Minister with an even worse one finally ends after Johnson.
    Unlikely, if Keir Starmer does become PM he will be the UK version of Francois Hollande in my view, an equally dull soft socialist who narrowly won because they were relatively inoffensive and voters were fed up of Boris as French voters were fed up of Sarkozy not out of much enthusiasm for him.

    Plus Thatcher and Cameron, arguably Blair were certainly better than the PMs they replaced
    I think if Starmer wins it may well be narrowly, maybe as head of a coalition or a PM with a majority of <20. So we will have a paralysed minority or small majority government. And how many successful PMs can you think of without working majorities? In the last sixty years, the only one I can is Wilson in '64.

    I don't see Starmer as having the ability to take dozens of decisions on the fly, like Blair. I think he'll be more like Brown or Ed Miliband, endlessly delaying. So I can't see him being that great.

    But, of course, I could be wrong. And it's five years at least before we'll know.
  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921
    Foxy said:

    dixiedean said:

    dixiedean said:

    stodge said:

    Tegnell says not concerned about a second wave in Sweden. Sticking to the regime, rather than lockdown, open up, rinse and repeat.

    And that is all they got from him, as was on a train with dodgy wifi.

    The problem is you bump up against a populist Government trying be popular all the time.

    Boris wants to be an unremittingly cheerful, positive Prime Minister of whom people would say "it was wonderful to be alive when Boris Johnson ran Britain" - they may not think that now.

    As such, being relentlessly positive, promising a return to the good times, being the spokesman for the return to normality, "Mr Good News" is what he wants and does well (it's not frankly very difficult). He spent the early summer promising hope, a return to shops, a return to pubs, a return to restaurants, a return to the office, a return to schools, a return to normality, a return to the life we all had back in the good times when we gave him a 80-seat majority.

    Those days...

    The problem was too many people believed or wanted to believe the virus was gone and we could go back to the life we had without risk. We could restore the night time economy, we could have fun again, we could forget the virus and have back the life we once had.

    It wasn't so simple but Boris couldn't be honest - instead, he did what he always does and tells the audience in front of him exactly what he thinks they want to hear.
    As i have said loads of time, the go and have a foreign summer holiday message...madness.
    Eat out to Help Out, wildly popular at the time and hailed as a roaring success, is proving less inspired in hindsight.
    Like picking up the ball on halfway slalomming past 4 and curling it into your own net.
    I think having 100s of people rammed in pubs was worse.
    100s were rammed into restaurants round here.
    Many pubs at least made an effort to distance.
    Some eateries made the opposite decision to pack them in.
    Same here. It was crazy.
    Interestingly, that very much DIDN'T happen down here in Dorset. Or in Cornwall (when I was briefly there). Or in Somerset when I was there for work a couple of times last month.
This discussion has been closed.